spinney
Americannoun
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of spinney
1300–50; Middle English < Middle French espinei (masculine), espinaie (feminine) a place full of thorns, derivative of espine spine; compare Late Latin spīnētum difficulty, equivalent to Latin spīn ( a ) thorn ( spine ) + -ētum noun suffix ( see arboretum)
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Then they made a tour of inspection of the whole farm and surveyed with speechless admiration the ploughland, the hayfield, the orchard, the pool, the spinney.
From "Animal Farm: A Fairy Story" by George Orwell
He led me into a small spinney, ample enough to hide us from view.
From "Crispin: The Cross of Lead" by Avi
Merry went in front leading a laden pony, and took his way along a path that went through a spinney behind the house, and then cut across several fields.
From "The Fellowship of the Ring" by J.R.R. Tolkien
Less than half a mile to the west, they came upon a spinney adjoining the southern edge of Caesar’s Belt.
From "Watership Down: A Novel" by Richard Adams
It happened that there was in the yard a pile of timber which had been stacked there ten years earlier when a beech spinney was cleared.
From "Animal Farm: A Fairy Story" by George Orwell
The flowery meads and bird-fruitful spinneys of the Arras teemed and rippled over the four walls.
From "The Once and Future King" by T. H. White
Gorse-coverts, hedge-rows, and little spinneys would be of no avail unless there were some grandly wild domain in which maternal and paternal foxes could roam in comparative security.
From Ayala's Angel by Trollope, Anthony
And he knew nothing of preserving and of a land that is all parcelled out into parks and gardens and spinneys.
From The Twentieth Century American Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great Anglo-Saxon Nations by Robinson, Harry Perry
It is a bare fold of land with one or two little scrubby spinneys alongside the plough.
From First and Last by Belloc, Hilaire
But you'd never find your way to her cot; it lies out beyond the spinneys.
From Love and Life An Old Story in Eighteenth Century Costume by Yonge, Charlotte Mary
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
